The 1976 Tribology Gold Medal was awarded to Robert Lawrence Johnson, who until 1975 was Chief of the Lubrication Branch of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (USA), for his outstanding contribution to tribological applications in aerospace.
Robert L Johnson attended Montanna State University, qualifying for a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1942. He then joined NACA (National Advisory Commission for Aeronautics – NASA’s predecessor), at Langley Field, Virginia transferring to the Lewis Research Centre, Cleveland, Ohio where, in 1955, he became a Chief of NASA’s Lubrication Branch and where most of his distinguished work took place.
His activities have resulted in a flow of over 150 first rate papers, ranging from the fundamentals of friction and lubrication to – most importantly – their application to practical problems for mechanical components. His work in the field of tribology has been outstanding.
The fundamental approach to friction and lubrication under simulated aerospace conditions, i.e cryogenics, extreme temperatures, hostile media conditions, has brought results applicable to many real tribology problems. Early studies showed the effect of crystal structure and the correlation between the composition of the solid lubricant and its lubricating effect. The work was then extended to the field of lubrication with reactive gases, and other chemically active environments.
More recently, Robert L Johnson has participated in Medical Tribology of internal prostheses. He also turned his attention to break materials and has been involved in studies of fretting. His Branch has achieved notable goals in solid and liquid lubricant studies, lubrication systems, sealing, self-lubricating materials, and fundamentals of wear and friction. He effectively combined in-house studies with industrial laboratory contracts and university grants to achieve significant utilization of advanced tribology. In all these he has applied unifying principles to control adhesion and energy dissipation in sliding solid surfaces.
Robert L Johnson possesses, to an extraordinary degree, two valuable talents which are keys to his many contributions to tribology: One is the ability to identify problems with interacting surfaces in relative motion and use of very basic studies and of unconventional lubricating systems to give solutions, the other is to pick an interdisciplinary group and synthesise it into a team to cover this broad spectrum.
As important as his own researches, was his support of the younger members of his team, some of whom have since become internationally known in their own right and who deserve a good share of the credit for the remarkable studies of atomically clean surfaces in a high vacuum, which are revolutionizing the concept of the nature of friction and wear and which are advancing sliding seal technology from a black art to a rational application of fluid film dynamics.
Robert Johnson was a National Director of the American Society of Lubrication Engineers from 1962 to 1967 and its President in 1968/69. He has been a United States Delegate to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Chairman of its Group on Wear of Engineering Materials. He has also worked with the Structures and Materials committee of NATO’s Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (AGARD).
Many honours and awards have already been bestowed upon him. In 1961 and again in 1965 he was co-recipient of the ASLE Alfred E Hunt Award. He received the Great Cleveland Growth Associations Federal Career Service Award in 1970, the ASLE National Award in 1971 and the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1973.
In 1966 the work of his Branch was first to gain for NASA, indeed for any Federal Agency, an IR-100 award (awarded by the Industrial Research Magazine, for inventions being considered amongst the year’s most important new Industrial Products in the United States). He was an IR-100 award winner again in 1973.
Since his retirement from NASA in 1975, Robert L Johnson has been active, both as a Consultant and as Adjunct Professor of Mechanical Engineering, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.